Draycott Eternal

by Christina Skye

  “Hmm?” She stirred a batch of simmering yarn the color of ripe plums. “Do you like this one?”

  “It’s very nice, but—”

  “The landscape is so lovely here, soft and muted. I took this color from the mist on the heather.”

  She had captured the shade perfectly, Ian thought. But he was far more concerned about what had happened to her last night. “I wanted to ask you about—”

  “My materials?” She gestured eagerly, and her wooden spoon struck one of the pans. “All natural. Why wear something dyed with coal tar? Besides, you can’t get this kind of subtle color with an aniline dye.” She laughed suddenly and ran a hand through her hair. “Sorry. I do tend to rage on about color.”

  Ian thought she was a study in color herself, with her hair a dozen hues of red, her eyes and skin gilded by the flickering fire. The fine flush to her cheeks made him want to ease close and—

  “Ian?”

  He realized he was inches from her cheek. He straightened, his breath hot and tight in his throat as he fought the spell she wove around him. Feelings didn’t count, he told himself. Not when he was working.

  “I think I’d better have a look around. See what the fog is like.” He strode to the back door, making the same circuit he’d made a dozen times since they’d arrived. He checked the narrow back scullery and made certain the bolts were sill secure. There was no way he would be caught unprepared again.

  Meanwhile, he was neither Jamee’s priest, nor her guardian, Ian reminded himself. He was here to protect her body, not heal her soul.

  Somehow he would have to remember that.

  WAS IT SOMETHING she had said?

  Jamee stirred the plum-colored dye, remembering the wariness that had filled Ian’s eyes before he strode outside. Maybe her monologue about dyes had sent him running. She was a fanatic on the subject, and most men developed glazed eyes at the mention of anything remotely connected to color, texture and fabric design.

  All except for her brothers. Jamee had Adam, Bennett and William well trained by now. They could tell the difference between a twill and a jacquard at ten paces.

  But Ian McCall was different from her brothers and any other man she’d known.

  Finished with her dyes, she sat down before the fire and pulled her knitting needles out of her bag. Back on the cliff she had expected to freeze up when Ian had kissed her. At first she had. Then something unexpected had happened, something that welled up from her toes and skittered through her chest, leaving her shaken.

  Why had Ian McCall sent her pulse racing when she tensed at the touch of any other man? Even Noel had made her anxious when he kissed her. He had been willing to wait for more, offering her a nice civilized pact. Nothing intimate—not now and maybe not ever.

  Jamee had been the one to refuse. She wanted a real relationship or nothing. Trust didn’t come in fractions, after all.

  Ian would never make that kind of pact, she thought. When he loved, it would be all or nothing. Lucky would be the woman who shared his passion.

  She gnawed on her lip as another row of knitting slid away. Maybe she felt at ease with him because of his formality. He was more mature than the men she knew, his control never slipping even when he’d fallen in the stream.

  The needles dropped from Jamee’s fingers as a sudden idea unfolded. A wild idea.

  An impossible idea.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “YOU WANT ME TO DO WHAT?” Ian asked as he closed the door.

  Jamee had been waiting for him. His first thought had been that something was wrong. His second was that she’d inhaled too much dye.

  She asked the question again in one quick breath.

  Ian simply stared at her.

  Her damp palms skittered over the length of the soft mohair she had just finished knitting.

  He propped his hands on his hips. “I don’t think I heard you right.”

  Jamee closed her eyes. When the silence held, she clutched her yarn and spun around. “Forget I asked.”

  Ian’s palm covered her arm. “I don’t want to forget it, Jamee. I just want to understand. Explain it to me.” He cleared his throat. “You want me to…touch you?”

  Jamee took a ragged breath. “With you, it’s different, don’t you see? You kissed me on the cliff.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No, that’s the point. With you I didn’t get clammy hands. In fact, I didn’t feel anything at all.”

  “I’m delighted to hear it,” he said dryly.

  “You don’t understand.” She paced the room. “When you kissed me, it was just that, a kiss. Nothing else. You see, usually I—I freeze up. Straining body parts and probing tongues make me go absolutely berserk.”

  Ian stared at her. “You’re asking me to be part of an experiment to help you stop…going berserk?”

  “I suppose no one ever asked you that before?”

  “I can’t say that they have.”

  Jamee gnawed at her lower lip. “You won’t do it then.”

  “I didn’t say that.” Ian shoved a lock of dark hair off his brow. “I need some time to think about it.”

  “How much time?”

  “How about a century or two?” he muttered.

  “So it was a crazy idea.” Jamee flushed. “Just forget it.”

  “No, it’s not entirely crazy. Unexpected. Unconventional.” Ian fingered one of her lengths of drying yarn, the deep green of a Highland loch at dawn. When he looked up, Jamee was watching him, wide-eyed, as if there was no one else in the world. As if there was no other place she’d rather be. It did extraordinary things to Ian’s ego.

  Maybe her idea wasn’t crazy. After all, he knew the effects of hostage trauma inside and out after years of dealing with victims in the field. He knew how to dig up the memories in order to lay the raw past to rest. He was a professional.

  Maybe he could do what Jamee asked.

  Then what? Would he be able to stop when the lesson was finished?

  Abruptly he remembered the sight of her as she trembled by the fire. Her waist was slender. He tried to forget the high, full breasts and the gentle sweep of her hips. To his disgust, Ian couldn’t drive the hot images from his mind. He had barely been able to keep his hands steady as he’d put her clothes back on. Instead of dressing her, he’d wanted to do the opposite.

  Sweet God above, did the woman have any idea what she was asking? What she wanted would strain any man’s control, let alone a man who had just been through three months of enforced celibacy during the agonizing day-and-night conclusion of a kidnapping case.

  Not that she knew that.

  Cursing silently, Ian reached for the teakettle, only to collide with Jamee as she reached for a length of yarn. She gasped, all softness and silk beneath his hand.

  Every muscle in Ian’s body clenched with male awareness as heat flared in primal response. Touch her? What she wanted was out of the question. There was no way he could allow it. Any distraction could be dangerous now, especially when his own control was in question.

  “The answer is no, Jamee. For more reasons than you know.”

  Jamee didn’t breathe. “Did…I offend you?”

  “No,” he growled. Suddenly the single room was far too small, far too intimate. “I forgot something in the back.”

  He strode to the narrow scullery. Maybe dunking his head in a basin of frigid water would restore his sanity.

  Then again, maybe not.

  HOW COULD SHE HAVE been such a fool?

  Jamee strode to the fireplace, kicked the wall, then paced back to the door. She was too impulsive, too damned honest. Even so, what in heaven’s name had possessed her to blurt out her wild plan to a man she barely knew?

  Because for some reason Ian McCall didn’t seem like a stranger. She felt comfortable around him and entirely safe. He’d obviously been shocked by her request, yet she hadn’t seen revulsion in his expression.

  Maybe he had been too shocked to be repulsed.

&n
bsp; She remembered how his eyes had narrowed, his hands had tightened and there had been a momentary intensity in his face that might have been the stirring of desire.

  Unless she had imagined it.

  As she knelt before the fire, Jamee turned her head and sniffed. Chocolate, here? A hallucination from caffeine withdrawal, she decided glumly. There couldn’t be any chocolate chips within miles of this place.

  When her brother Terence had been alive, their house had been filled with that smell. Whenever something bad happened, Terence insisted on baking cookies by the dozen, which the Nights finished off together before a roaring fire.

  Jamee still missed Terence. All of her family felt the gaping hole of his absence. His laughter and joy had lit their lives until he had been run down while sweeping a pregnant woman out of the path of a drunken driver. Yet even in the midst of her sadness, Jamee had felt his spirit among them, laughing in the birch trees that lined the fields at the family compound in northern California, joining in the reckless hilarity of a swim in the stream that bordered the fields of wildflowers he loved. He had cast a long shadow over all of them, but it was his light that they remembered now, not his loss.

  Or at least, they tried.

  Jamee frowned at the fire. Why was she thinking about Terence all of a sudden?

  Outside the wind hummed past the windows and sighed down the chimney. The fire hissed and popped, rising in waves of orange and gold. He would have adored the simplicity of this old stone cottage, Jamee thought, especially its thatched roof and fireplace of weathered stone.

  The curtains drifted before the window. Light seemed to flicker over the rough floor. She tensed, sensing something enter the room, creeping into the silence which was broken only by the restless hiss of the fire.

  Jamee bit back a strained laugh. More hallucinations. There was no one here but herself, of course.

  And the ghosts of her own sad past.

  JAMEE CORNERED IAN the moment he returned. “I have something to tell you,” she said, then closed her mouth and stared. His hair was soaking wet, molded sleekly to his head. “What happened? Did you fall into the stream again?”

  “I decided that a basin of cold water and a wash might clear my head.”

  “Did they?”

  “Not in the slightest.”

  “Here, use this to dry your hair.” Jamee handed him a length of butter-soft wool streaked with mauve, silver and indigo.

  Ian stared down at the beautiful weaving and shook his head. “I couldn’t possibly. You made this, didn’t you?”

  Jamee flushed with pleasure. “It’s a blend of mohair and cashmere. One of my current experiments.”

  “It’s amazing.” Ian slid the fine yarn through his fingers. “The fiber is soft but springy. Almost alive.”

  Jamee was shocked that he had noticed. Few men would have. A crazy smile climbed to her lips, and she suppressed it with difficulty.

  Smiling because of a few words about her work? Was she a complete and utter fool?

  Ian went into the adjoining scullery to change. Jamee tried not to hear the hiss of his belt and the rustle of falling clothes. When he reemerged, he wore worn Levi’s with frayed knees and a soft gray turtleneck that hugged his muscled chest.

  He looked clean and sleek and more than a little dangerous. He also looked good enough to eat.

  Jamee felt a warm, sensual haze settle over her.

  “What was it you wanted to tell me?” Ian said, tucking his damp clothes into his bag and then shrugging into his jacket again.

  Jamee liked him better without the jacket. He had looked younger, more relaxed. For some reason his face had hardened when he’d pulled on the muted wool, checking each pocket in turn.

  Stop looking for secrets, she told herself.

  She forced her unruly thoughts back under control. “I want you to forget what I said. I had no right to presume that you—that we—” She made a breathless sound and tried again. “We’re complete strangers. There is no earthly reason why you should consider doing what I asked.”

  Ian moved across the floor, making no sound, more sleek and dangerous than ever. “There is only one reason I would consider touching you, Jamee, and that’s the same reason I can’t. You said you felt nothing, but I did. A hell of a lot, in fact. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Jamee nodded. “I understand. Touching me was…distasteful.”

  Ian shoved his belt into place, cursing harshly. “Dammit to hell, woman, that’s not what I was trying to say. Just the opposite.”

  Jamee blinked. “The opposite?” Suddenly her cheeks felt hot and breathing seemed more than she could manage. “But I thought you—”

  Ian laughed roughly and plowed his fingers through his damp hair. “Why you should think that is beyond me. You make a man want to run his hands through your hair and catch all those impossible shades of auburn and gold. You make me want to take my time learning the taste of your mouth. And kissing would only be the start,” he said hoarsely. “Now do you understand?”

  “Oh,” she said very softly.

  “And there’s another problem,” Ian continued savagely. “I’m not going to lie to you any longer, Jamee. I did see another light in the fog last night. It could mean something or nothing, but I don’t like it. There’s no reason for people to be wandering up here in this kind of weather.”

  “Maybe they were lost.”

  “Damn unlikely. Besides, this is Dunraven land and private property.”

  Jamee tried to ignore the fear that skittered along her neck. She might always be a target, but she refused to let that possibility ruin her life. “You think someone is following us?” She didn’t ask why. Though Ian wouldn’t know it, the reason was far too clear.

  For the money, of course. For the chance to carve out a luscious wedge of Nightingale Electronics’s annual profits courtesy of a ransom payment.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “What do we do now?” she asked, clutching a ball of yarn to her chest.

  “Nothing. There’s not a damned thing we can do in this fog except stay inside and keep alert,” he said angrily.

  “Then I guess…you won’t be wanting any more distractions.”

  He cradled her chin with both palms, impossibly gentle as he met her gaze. His dangerous, edgy energy was carefully leashed now. “Want it or no, you will ever be a distraction to a man, lass,” he said huskily. Then he released her and straightened his shoulders. “But right now, I’m going to check outside one more time. After that, I think we should talk.”

  TALK.

  Talk was the last thing Jamee wanted to do. Talking meant dredging up memories that still oozed blood and probing wounds that had never closed.

  She was no closer to being prepared when Ian returned. “I don’t want to talk. I—I have to go out,” she said tensely. “I need some fresh air, just for a few minutes.” She moved to the door. “I can’t stand being cooped up. It reminds me of—things I don’t want to remember.”

  Ian closed the door, but did not move away, his arms crossed over his chest. “I don’t think you should go out. It’s impossible to see anything. You could be hurt.”

  Jamee studied his face. “Is there something you aren’t telling me?”

  “No.”

  Could he be one of Adam’s hired guards? He had the necessary look of confidence. The cool competence. But there was none of the arrogance she had come to expect in men who were paid to protect others weaker than they were.

  No, it was impossible, Jamee told herself. Lying wouldn’t come easy to this man. Besides, he didn’t even have a gun, and no self-respecting security officer went anywhere without a gun. Even to bed.

  She flushed. She was going to go crazy if she stayed in here with him much longer. Staring at those broad shoulders was killing her. Wanting to touch the cool planes of his face was a torment.

  She paced to the fire, then braced her back against the wall, praying the warmth of the solid stone would help her
relax.

  It didn’t.

  “So,” she said evenly. “How is the fog?”

  “Exactly the same.” Ian clattered around in the cupboards and pulled out a handful of cooking implements.

  “What are you doing?”

  He poured flour into an old earthenware bowl. “Making scones. Cooking helps me relax.”

  Jamee’s brow arched. “I didn’t realize you were nervous.”

  He met her gaze squarely, and this time, hunger darkened his eyes. “Being cooped up here with you isn’t exactly fun for me, either.”

  Jamee couldn’t help glancing lower, where his thighs were lovingly cradled by faded denim. She blinked, then looked away.

  “That is the general area of the problem,” Ian said dryly.

  Jamee crossed her arms nervously, determined to pretend she hadn’t heard his remark. She wasn’t used to discussing things like this—not with men. “So what do we talk about?”

  “Why don’t we start with men?”

  “Men?” Jamee swallowed. “As in relationships?”

  “That’s the usual idea.” Wrist-deep in a mound of flour, Ian bent over the bowl. He might have been smiling, but she couldn’t tell. “When did you first fall in love?”

  “I take it you don’t mean Will Mazzoli.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Fourth row. My first-grade pottery class.”

  Ian’s lips twitched. “Tell me about Will.”

  “The class was my mother’s idea. Something to put me in touch with my artistic feminine spirit. We ran around and pretended to be butterflies.”

  Ian opened a tin of evaporated milk and added some to the flour. “Even Will?”

  “He pretended to be a net, as I recall. After that came the clay. I made figures that looked like that little dough boy and Will smashed them into pieces. Then I decked him. It was love ever after. We were inseparable.”

  Ian chuckled. “So Will was love number one. How about number two?”

  “Oliver Gardiner,” Jamee said promptly. “He put a frog down my back in computer class and I retaliated by throwing his backpack out of the bus. His homework papers were scattered for blocks, after which he was grounded for a month. We became inseparable, too.”